


Surrender the Day

by marginalia



Category: When Marnie Was There (2014)
Genre: Gen, but only because in the movie squinting is not even required, marnie/anna if you squint, yes even though they are related
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 11:37:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8889307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marginalia/pseuds/marginalia
Summary: Marnie brushed the hair from tiny Anna's forehead, pulled the bedclothes snug around her, and told stories of their past and future, secrets for dreaming and memories to thread them together.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Koraki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Koraki/gifts).



> Title adapted from "Calling the Moon", by Dar Williams.

Marnie had always been a lonely child, an only child, coddled in theory, neglected in reality. Ever since she was small she’d been hidden away at Marsh House, cared for in body, more or less, by Nan and the maids, but her spirit was always treated harshly. They were experts in leaving bruises no one could see, be they on her skin or on her soul.

Every time her mother and father returned to her at the Marsh House, Marnie hoped that they would never leave her again. She hoped no one she loved would ever leave her. 

Despite everything in her life, she always hoped. She had so much love to give and so few people to give it to. She had a love that could call out across time if it had to, and finally, it did.

Mother and Father were away more than ever as she grew older, and in the space their absence left was only cruelty, against which Marnie struggled to protect the flame of her tender heart, the space she held for hope. She lived for the brief time her parents spent at the Marsh House, she lived for stolen moments of friendship with neighbors when she could escape, and she lived for the dream of a precious secret friend who was all her own, a light she could shine on her darkness.

When Marnie first saw Anna in her dreams, she thought she was a boy. She saw this strange new child wandering alone at the edge of the marsh, bravely crossing at low tide up to the house, and she wondered who they were and if they could be friends. Her view of the marsh had been a punishment, a further isolation from any hope of contact with the villagers, and it seemed a miracle and also only right that her secret joy would come from the movement of the water.

"Were you disappointed that I’m a girl?" Anna asked later, hiding behind what her aunt called her "ordinary face".

"Oh no!" Marnie laughed. And she hadn't been. A girl, that was so much better than a boy in ways she couldn't explain, then or maybe ever, and when she saw Anna's face the night of the party, when Marnie had danced with Kazuhiko, she knew deep within her that Anna felt it too, whatever it was.

The dreams went on, even after Anna came, a ghost or a witch from the marsh, dreams both of adventures of quiet. Dreams of a future that seemed so real, but also too beautiful to trust, memories of a time yet to come. When they were together, Marnie would forget what was dream and what was true, and as they went on together, it was as if they were choosing all of the most beautiful dreams and making them happen. “We’re choosing our fate,” Marnie thought, and thrilled with the romance of it all.

Once Marnie asked Anna if she had friends back home, a quick smile smoothing over a curl of anticipatory jealousy, but Anna spoke instead of an invisible magic circle, one where they were spinning separate on the outside and everyone else was cozy on the inside. "But before," she said earnestly, touching Marnie's hand, "It was only me on the outside."

The outside of the circle was dangerous, secret, exciting. When Marnie was grown, when she understood what her time with Anna had meant, she wondered if there wasn't something to it all. She saw the Marsh House as the center of a circle, with its sharp pain and its small joys, and she saw all of time turning around it. She thought of the desperately lonely child she had been, the desperately lonely child Anna would be, and it was as if they had each hurled themselves through time at the other.

Anna had always come to her at high tide, the time when the Marsh House was reflected in the water, a perfect ghostly double of itself. Marnie remembered the times when she thought Anna was a ghost, the times she thought she had been driven crazy by the House, and she knew now it was not that. She knew now that she and Anna were reflections in a way, reflections across time, but they were both true as light. 

Circles and cycles, the motion of the oars as she pulled the boat through the water, the waxing and waning of the moon pulling the water to Marsh House and back. Marnie brushed the hair from tiny Anna's forehead, pulled the bedclothes snug around her, and told stories of their past and future, secrets for dreaming and memories to thread them together. From tomorrow she called her to yesterday, tracing a line through the stars for her little ghost to return to her.

Anna seemed to often come to her at twilight, and Marnie would wait all day long, wishing she could push through the daylight faster. Sometimes Anna would come and then disappear, and Marnie thought her mother must be right, that Anna was a little witch. Anna disappeared right in front of her one night, and Marnie prowled the edges of the marsh calling for her, lantern in hand, imagining her shape in every shadow, only to have her finally appear again just where she had been. They flew across the sand to each other, a crushing hug, whispered apologies, Marnie feeling Anna so warm and solid in her arms that she couldn't be anything but real.

Marnie wondered if she ever disappeared like Anna did. She wondered if Anna ever forgot her sometimes. Marnie would awaken from dreams, dreams of low tide and walking across to Anna, farther than she'd ever been allowed to walk from the Marsh House on her own. She couldn't believe that she had ever forgotten even for a moment, and she decided to start a journal, to write down her ghost.

They were each the secret of the other, sneaking away to the edge of the marsh, building sandcastles, dreaming little houses for them to live in safe away from the bullying maids and the dismissive children. It's always easier to tell secrets when your hands are busy and you don't have to look each other in the eye.

Near the end of their time together, it was Anna's idea to go to the silo, and Marnie wanted to be as brave as her friend thought she was. Wind whipped through like malevolent ghosts, rain poured down making the wood too slick to navigate, and when they fell asleep, sheer exhaustion from terror, the tenuous connection of the moon slipped away. Marnie awoke and Anna was gone, but Kazuhiko was there to guide her down in the bright light of day.

With the night in the silo, everything changed. Marnie’s ties to Kazuhiko were growing stronger, and Anna needed her less and less. The next night as the tides changed, though it broke her heart, she said goodbye. It wasn’t safe for them, she thought, living as ghosts out of time, not healthy to live as secrets. 

It was the beginning of Marnie’s leaving. 

At the end of her life, despite all her best efforts Marnie herself had left everyone that she loved, but she knew there was still ahead of her a time to come when Anna was there, as she pushed on through to the light.


End file.
